


CRASH LANDINGS

by spicyshimmy



Series: Dragon Wars [4]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossover, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-22
Updated: 2011-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 10:43:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of a series of vignettes for a Dragon Age/Star Wars AU, written for Kassafrassa on tumblr, with whom the concept was developed. Three times Anders found himself coming in too hot. <i>They kissed once by the lake, and it was no accident.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	CRASH LANDINGS

Hawke was different on Naboo.

It was accident they met there in the first place, accident they were assigned to work together, one of so many happy accidents—like _not_ going in too hot, crash-landings that Anders wished he could have pulled off with a little less smoke, a little more finesse, and without looking like something that had just made it the wrong way through the rear end of a cerrabore.

As if there was a _right_ way to make it through the rear end of a cerrabore.

Anders had ruined more landing pods that way—but the point was pulling out in time, pulling up, coasting in to rest _before_ you were nothing more than burning shrapnel and stains for a soot-streaked droid to clear away.

‘Well done, as always,’ Hawke said, shielding his eyes from the glare as the engine sputtered out.

Anders found his legs quickly enough, muscles sore from hanging on; they walked side by side out of the hangar bay with that comfortable sense of purpose and camaraderie, before Hawke stopped for just a moment to brush something dirty off Anders’s ear, a few loose wisps of hair tucked back behind it.

There was no point. Anders could have told him as much. It always flew free again and that itself, the tickle of stubborn hair and the whisper of the wind, was as much an exercise in acceptance as any of the others Anders had been taught through the years.

Then the old kath hound came bounding up and there was licking everywhere, Hawke’s laughter, the lingering heat from his fingertips, a swift charge no more important and no less unforgettable than an electric shock.

Anders lifted his hand to his ear, where the hair was already flying free, shiver upon reckless shiver.

*

They kissed once by the lake, and it was no accident. Anders found his fingers tangled in the fabric of Hawke’s cowl, mouth welcome beneath Hawke’s mouth, the damp and stubborn prickles of sweat from morning practice stubbling Hawke’s throat just as insistently as his actual stubble. Anders chased one such bead with his thumb, insubstantial and transient as the dew on a knobblypear leaf.

But he was tired of thinking in terms of lessons; he knew the rumors of Hawke’s parentage, for example, and he knew that Hawke was no accident to be prevented—that all future little Hawkes born of carelessness and personality and individuality and, possibly, love wouldn’t be unwelcome in someone else’s arms, on some future Naboo when he remained as no more than slips and streams in the Force. It was not wrong, he said; it couldn’t _always_ be wrong.

‘Do you think it’s wrong?’ Anders asked.

Hawke smiled against his mouth, hot breath warmer than any sunset breeze blown in from over the lake. ‘No,’ he said.

‘But do you think it’s _right_?’ Anders asked.

The words his master gave him stung in that way. He always recognized when they returned, when he had to admit how much he’d learned and to what end, those lessons that shaped him better than any lightsaber form. It wasn’t all guarding and defending, knowledge set to purpose.

Then again, Anders would be the first to admit, he wasn’t the perfect Jedi.

Hawke held Anders’s face in his hands as though he had no questions, as though he had no doubt. It didn’t seem to matter whether or not Anders _was_ perfect, simply that he was, and Anders remembered each crash-landing with the same thrill of affection, that night on Naboo being no exception to the consistent pattern.

*

Anders was different on Naboo.

There was no real way to point at a separate time and confirm that was the moment time as one knew it had ended. This would be foolish, and more foolish than Anders had been readily, for so many years, for so many reasons.

Naboo wasn’t the end of anything.

It was supposed to be a beginning.

Maybe that should have been the same thing—when Anders considered all endings and all beginnings he knew that the proper course to take, without the inevitable and spectacular crash landing, would be accepting this more readily. There was no end that didn’t foster a new beginning, and—on the darker side of the same truth—no beginning that didn’t imply something had ended already.

Anders might have been meant to learn this all along, but by the same measure he hadn’t any idea how he was supposed to trust its meaning.

But it was Hawke who found him in the desert on Tatooine—and not the Imperials, not their enemies, not the end he imagined and probably, _clearly_ not the end of anything. Hawke had been looking for him for days, ever since Anders felt that change in the Force.

A loss that was no beginning.

All of the younglings, gone.

Anders didn’t turn against him, or hold the fabric in the folds of his cowl, or feel the sweat as it dried on his throat, the bob as Hawke swallowed against emotion or perhaps nothing more than a gust of sandy wind. It was Hawke who crossed the distance, one hand on Anders’s shoulder, both of them squinting far into the sky as they waited for the suns to set. It wasn’t right; it couldn’t have been wrong.

In the end, it was just another evening.


End file.
